Down and back to Shafter

Just a quick trip down and back in one day, but on the way down south I took a little extra time to look for some geocaches. I tried to find a fossil leaf print at the unknown cache near Patterson, but failed again. Found 8 caches; three in a cluster off of Jayne Avenue near Coalinga. I also picked up a nice Boy Scout eagle geocoin that would like to visit caches at eagle scout service projects. I know I’ve been to some, but they are not local.

GBA 4x4 to Iowa Hill

Some of the GBA 4x4 crew headed up to the Sierra’s between Placerville and Auburn. The reason was to scout some areas for a possible 4x4 run during Geo Woodstock 6, but we also collected a few cache finds along the way.

We did a run up to Slate Mountain on a road that was not difficult, but was narrow. How much pinstriping the truck got will have to wait until I wash the dust off (and the roads were very dusty). I thought the prettiest part was dropping down into the very narrow American River canyon and finding the suspension bridges.

Here’s a few caged geocachers returning from the lowest county high-point in California.

Bthomas and mjp303 make their escape. It’s a good thing the neighbors were cool, although the lady kept calling from the second floor window, “You don’t have to climb the fence!”

Must be a geocache nearby.

Geodanimal often tries unique approaches to a cache.

It takes some good sized bolts to anchor this suspension bridge.

These brilliant red flowers really stood out.

I’ve always wanted to attend a cool church. Now I know where it’s at.

At first I thought this was a John Kennedy (but there is no d). It’s interesting to imagine what brought a 23 year-old from Ireland to a gold camp in the middle of nowhere. What was his journey like to get here? What happened to him that he died so young?

Livermore to Tracy

Picked up 14 finds today by caching North Livermore, and then heading east over old Altamont pass to Tracy. Can’t say there was anything particularly memorable.

A local hunt

Atypically (at least recently) I hunted down some local caches, something I probably haven’t done for about a year. Picked up 7 along with a couple of frustrating DNFs. The best area was north on Croak Road where this old barn was located. I guess this area is already slated for being subdivided by Dublin developers.

Birthday

We headed off toward Benicia today, but stopped first in Martinez and grabbed a single cache. After a bit of wandering around, we decided the day wasn’t so great for caching (unseasonably warm). Basically, we just had a nice drive.

Round Valley

We did a 5 mile loop hike in Round Valley today with Dan and picked up the new caches (5 caches). The hillsides were still green. It was cool, and in one exposed spot it was quite windy. Last year along this same trail I took my great rattlesnake photo, but we saw no snakes this year.

Knight’s Ferry

Karen and I took the day to head into the Sierra foothills along the Stanislaus River today. Our first stop was at Knight’s ferry, and the wildflowers were incredible. We took a beautiful 5 mile hike along an old ditch above the river looking to two caches. We found one (or rather Karen did)—a nano (ugh, the coords were off by 40’) and DNFd the other (a D5 T4.5 by the same owner, so who knows if the coords were good there).

Then we hiked in Red Hills, and drove the 4x4 Serpentine Loop, and found 2 more caches. The wild flowers in Red Hills were not as good as they have been other years.

Discovery Bay and Tracy

Dan called because he had an itch to do some cache hunting, and he wanted to head out to Discovery Bay. We left about noon and picked up 8 in Discovery Bay (and we DNFd a nano at the entrance to a storage facility—there were several gardeners right in the area checking us out). Then we headed out into the delta area picking up a few more and finally ending right in Tracy. It was interesting that we had a close cache about 2 miles away, but our route to get there was 15 miles because the river was in the way, and there are few bridges. No standout caches, but we had a good time together.